


003 "climbing"

by wheel_pen



Series: Iron Man AU [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fish out of Water, My Pepper is different, Pre-Iron Man, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 20:16:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While attempting to climb a mountain—an activity he discovers is much less fun than he had anticipated—Tony reminisces about several incidents and theories he has involving Pepper. He talks about the time she walked into a locker room full of naked celebrities after a charity baseball game, for example, and also about the "psychic connection" they allegedly share. "You just don't mention weenie roasts in a men's locker room."</p>
            </blockquote>





	003 "climbing"

**Author's Note:**

> 1) My Pepper is very different from canon Pepper. Her personality/origin is very different; to separate her from canon Pepper I've given her a new last name and a different hair color.
> 
> 2) The bad words are censored. That's just how I do things.
> 
> 3) Stories are numbered in the order I wrote them, which isn't necessarily the order in which they occur. At some point I'll post a timeline.
> 
> I wrote this series after the first Iron Man movie came out. It's very AU but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play with these characters.

            I had a lot of dangerous hobbies. If I could ride it fast, jump off of it at a high altitude, or better yet both, I gave it a try. I was usually decent at each activity, thanks to my natural athletic prowess. It sure as h—l wasn't because I practiced anything—I got bored too easily to really _become_ good at something.

            Today it was mountain climbing. Granted, I wasn't going very fast. And it wasn't my intention to jump off at any point. But I looked down a lot, which tended to keep my heart rate up. It also forced me to concentrate, which I recognized was a good thing but didn't often do. I mean, I couldn't really stop climbing halfway up the mountain and say, "I'm bored, let's go." No, I had to finish what I started.

            This realization, when I was halfway up the mountain and bored, made me decide not to try this particular activity again.

            I wondered what would happen if I locked my safety clamps, pulled out my cell, and called Pepper. "I'm bored. Let's go!" What would she send—a hot air balloon? The thought amused me. I wanted to try calling her just to see what she'd say, except it wouldn't be as much fun if I couldn't see her face. Pepper didn't like to come on my little adventures, you see. She'd set me up with all the training and gear I needed, pointed me towards the mountain, and said, "Have fun, sir!" She would meet me at the end. Something to look forward to, anyway.

            The view was nice, of course. The view was _spectacular_. Pine trees, lakes, other mountains, other people scurrying about like insects. Reminded me of the bug farm I had as a kid, where you could watch the ants crawling over bits of plastic shaped like swimming pools and cows. My mom got me that for Christmas one year—

            You see what mountain climbing does? It was like I was focused, but also not. A random memory would just swim to the surface, with perfect clarity in every detail although I hadn't thought of it in years. And there was no TV I could turn on, no Scotch I could drink, no machine components I could distract myself with as I inched slowly up the granite rock face.

            This was definitely not a hobby I ever needed to try again.

            I liked sky-diving. Sky-diving was fun. It was _fast_. Fly up, jump out, land, boom. Well, hopefully no _boom_ , but you know what I mean. This one time, I jumped out of a plane into the middle of the Utah desert. I waited until the last possible second to open my chute of course, then tucked and rolled into a perfect landing. Popped back up to my feet and started corralling the chute so it wouldn't get caught in the wind, and all of a sudden—

            "Let me help you with that, sir."

            Nearly jumped out of my flight suit. There was Pepper standing there, in full office attire, except she'd gotten some chunky heels that wouldn't sink into the cracked earth quite as quickly as stilettos.

            "What the h—l are you doing here?!" One of these days I would learn not to bother asking.

            She squinted at me in the strong light and tucked a piece of stray hair behind her ear. Even Pepper had to occasionally give way to the environment, after all. "I thought you would like a ride back to the main building, sir." She had brought, of all things, a golf cart.

            "Pepper, I could've landed anywhere within a one-mile radius," I pointed out. Again, futile, don't know why I bothered. "And they have, you know, people who are paid to find me and bring me back."

            "Well, it just seemed better to take care of it myself, sir," she remarked, in a tone that indicated she didn't think anyone else could be trusted with the task.

            I found this very flattering. Also kind of dumb. "J---s, I could've landed on you or something," I shot back, finally unlatching the harness of the chute (with Pepper's help). "On that gigantic, ugly golf cart, maybe."

            "Oh, I don't think that would have happened, sir."

            Should've seen the look on the faces of the jump guys when I came back in my Pepper-driven chariot instead of the Land Rover they sent out. Hilarious.

            This story was relevant because it involved Pepper, and also because I was thinking about it as I climbed the mountain. And climbed and climbed and climbed.

            Parasailing, now that was a sport. Wind-surfing. Bungee jumping (not as cool as when you get to control the flight more, though). Car racing. Well, that was actually almost too much work to qualify as fun, in my opinion. I preferred driving at insanely high speeds on regular roads, which was arguably more dangerous.

            I went through a little montage of active hobbies in my mind, set to a surging rock song. I had to admit I didn't always win these things, if there was something to win. I was insanely competitive and had been known to train for weeks in order to beat one particularly loathed rival, and I wasn't always the most gracious loser (or winner). But, like I said before, normally I didn't practice, so I thought I did pretty well considering it was usually my first time out.

            Pepper popped up over and over in my montage, of course. She was in the crowd, on the dock, at the lift, with the pit crew, at the stables. I didn't know how much she really enjoyed these things. I couldn't get her to participate in them, that was for sure. Once, just once, I persuaded her to try ice skating—simple ice skating—with the argument that skates were kind of like high heels. The result was pretty much a disaster, to the point where even _I_ didn't tease her about it (much). Not the most athletic creature on the planet, Pepper.

            Although one time, I made her sit outside to work while Rhodey and I played a game of pick-up basketball in the driveway. She was doing her usual fine job of utterly ignoring our escalating trash talk when suddenly Rhodey blocked my attempt at a jump shot and the ball flew right for Pepper's head.

            _S—t_. That's what I thought. This was in no way going to be good.

            Fortunately, Pepper caught the ball. Big sigh of relief from _me_. I mean, I didn't think she would have been hurt or anything, but she would've been d—n p----d, imperturbable or not. Then, Pepper winged the ball back onto the court and made the most incredible shot I'd ever seen in my life. Sitting in a folding chair in the driveway, laptop on her lap, one-handed, not even _looking_ —she made a basket.

            "My point!" I shouted to Rhodey, who was still staring open-mouthed at my multi-talented assistant. I was glad I had a witness to this event, because nobody would have believed me. I didn't spread this story around _too_ much, though, because I was saving Pepper as a secret weapon in case I got asked to do a charity basketball game or something.

            Which reminded me of one more story about Pepper and sports. I told you this was a long climb. So I was invited to participate in an exhibition baseball game for charity once. Didn't know how my name came up—I could only imagine they were turned down a lot or something. It was a pretty big charity, actually, for kids, whose name I will refrain from dropping, but you would know it. And no, it wasn't one of those organizations that helped kids who had been crippled by landmines or other war-related injuries—that just made for an awkward situation all around, let me tell you.

            Anyway, I thought I would give it a try. I remembered my dad taking me to baseball games when I was a kid. I'm not sentimental at all—big shock, huh?—but I just thought it might be fun to go back to one, see what the view was like from the field instead of the air-conditioned, buffet-filled VIP box. And kick some a-s, of course.

            I'm happy to report my team _did_ win, and that I managed to not cause any major PR disasters by the time I walked back into the locker room (at least that I knew of). So all of us bigwigs were in there showering and changing—every one of us a multi-millionaire at least, until the bills came at the end of the month anyway—executives, actors, musicians, politicians, athletes from other sports. The thing you had to understand was that the amount of sheer _ego_ contained in that room was staggering—ninety percent of us were arrogant p---ks who thought the world revolved around us. And when we were _in_ our world, it _did_ revolve around us. We spent a lot of time thinking about how to intimidate or impress other guys like us, much as dogs did I imagine.

            What I'm trying to explain is that this attitude rubbed off on our underlings, our minions if you will, and even if they _didn't_ feel that way we would make them act like they did, if we thought it would unsettle someone else. So, Pepper wasn't the _only_ assistant who barged right into the locker room with a message for the boss that was just too important to wait. She wasn't even the only female one. But she was the only one who honestly didn't even seem to notice anyone else in the room, or the fact that I was naked in the shower. The last part was easy to explain, because we did that at home, actually—it saved time if Pepper updated me while I was washing my hair. Usually I was behind a shower door or glass block wall, of course, but she didn't seem to care either way.

            "Your dinner reservation is at Bonicci's at six," Pepper reminded me, as though we were standing fully-clothed in the hallway. Apparently she had also picked up my dry-cleaning and taken a couple of phone messages from people in the company. Another fantastic thing about Pepper: she wasn't tossing out names like "the Senator" or "the Minister" or otherwise acting like she had some message for me that was intimidatingly, impressively important (not like Bonicci's was hard to get into—just a little family-owned Italian place I had been going to since I was a kid). 

            She also had something for me to sign. "My hands are wet," I pointed out. Along with the rest of me. She picked up a towel that was lying nearby and handed it to me, inadvertently snatching it away from the embarrassed investment account manager sitting nearby. I dried my hands, returned the towel, and took the document. It was going to be a little wrinkled from the steam of the showers—I hoped I got to tell this story to whomever it was meant for. I pretended to peruse whatever the paper was, trying to think of more mischief to inflict. "Pepper, this is Steve Winchester, Matt Esco, Phil Langolino," I introduced, gesturing to the naked, showering men behind me. It's important to be polite, you know. "This is my assistant, Pepper."

            "Hello," Pepper said brightly. "Nice to meet you." They all waved with one hand.

            "Pepper," I chastised, "you've met Phil before! Don't you remember?"

            "Oh, of course," she nodded. "Last summer, at the weenie roast!" I barely kept a straight face. Pepper did have an awfully good memory. And a very strange sense of decorum.

            I scribbled my signature on the paper and gave it back. Timing was everything and I didn't want to drag this out too long. Besides, Pepper's phone kept steaming over, which she was frowning about. "Thanks, Pep," I told her nonchalantly. "I'm gonna finish my shower now."

            "Okay," she agreed. I might've said, 'finish my coffee now.' She gave my bathing companions a parting smile. "Good-bye!" And then she marched back on outside, already trying to make a phone call. Pepper was all-business.

            Well, actually that wasn't the last thing that happened in this story, but the coda kinda made me mad. On the way out, some b-----d snapped Pepper on the a-s with a towel! Can you believe that? I yelled at him, but aside from a brief physical response Pepper didn't even seem to notice, just kept right on walking. I figured now everyone was going to think we did _that_ at home, too.

            "Weenie roast?" I needled her in the car on the way to dinner, precisely because it was such an awesome line.

            "Am I wrong?" she asked, knowing she wasn't. "Didn't I meet Mr. Langolino at the weenie roast at the marina?"

            "Yes, but that's not the point." I did try to educate her about things sometimes, because even though Pepper was brilliant, she was also kind of dumb. "You just don't mention weenie roasts in a men's locker room."

            "Hmm, I'll remember that next time I'm in a men's locker room," she told me. There was sarcasm in there, but you had to dig for it.

            "Call Rhodey. I wanna tell him what you did," I insisted. This was a big hobby of mine, regaling certain friends with Pepper stories.

            She pulled out her phone. "I should've recognized Mr. Langolino sooner," she murmured, chastising herself a bit. Pepper was very proud of her memory, as proud as she got anyway.

            "Hey, Rhodey," I said into the phone. "Yeah, we won, I'm awesome!" I patted Pepper's knee. "Don't be too hard on yourself. You're used to seeing him with clothes on. Rhodey, you aren't gonna _believe_ what Pepper did after the game…"

            So, still climbing. Wow, this took a long time. The woman at the front office suggested I try a shorter, easier climb, but feeling my masculinity threatened, I chose a harder one. Not _the_ hardest, thank goodness, because I would've been out here all night.

            What else could I think about to avoid letting any unwanted musings into my conscious mind? Oh, that reminded me: so Pepper and I had this weird kind of telepathic connection. No, seriously. Of course, she could anticipate what I wanted before I even knew I wanted it, like a cup of coffee or something. Some people were just good at that. But that wasn't really what I was talking about. Don't get me wrong, that particular ability was very impressive and fairly rare. But I'd seen it before. No, I meant we had something else.

            See, I could send Pepper _specific_ messages, telepathically, if I just concentrated hard enough. The trick was concentrating, because I wasn't very good at that unless I was designing something or building it (or taking it apart). For example, I could think really hard about wanting her to bring me a snack in the studio, and then all of a sudden there she was with a snack, without me using the intercom or anything. Yeah, that was the kind of high-level stuff I used our telepathic connection for. Sometimes I did it when I was in a meeting listening to some overpaid old guy drone on and on, about to die of boredom, and next thing you know Pepper was at the door with "an urgent phone call from Hong Kong" or something like that.

            Now Rhodey didn't believe this _at all_. _If_ he believed that _I_ believed—that I wasn't just messing with him—he claimed it was coincidence, body language, Pepper just knowing me, even Pepper keeping tabs on me via the surveillance system at the house. "If I heard you'd been in a board meeting for two hours, _I'd_ know you'd want an excuse to leave," he had said many times.

            But I knew otherwise. I liked to test it, thinking of things I didn't normally ask for or had no reason to want. I worked every time, as long as I didn't lose focus. That requirement tripped me up a lot when I was trying to demonstrate it to Rhodey, because it was hard for me to concentrate on something totally random— _Pepper, bring a roll of toilet paper to my office_ —while someone was watching me. And he felt he _had_ to watch me closely, in case I was slipping her a text message or something. This was what we spent a lot of time doing when we were supposed to be discussing military contracts. That's your tax dollars at work, folks.

            When I first realized we had this ability, I felt a little inhibited, which was very unusual for me and not a feeling I liked very much. Because, of course, there were times when I was, ahem, "concentrating" on things I didn't necessarily need or want her to know about. Like the hot woman across the room, or the hot woman in the backseat, or the hot woman in my mind. You get the general idea. Occasionally, and I didn't mind admitting this, the hot woman in my mind _was_ Pepper, because she was hot and she was around. Constantly. So obviously, one of my first concerns upon realizing we had this psychic connection thingy was—did she pick up _those_ thoughts? And, if so, did she mind them? I guessed she didn't mind since she'd never said anything, but that was when I was fantasizing in ignorance, which was surely much easier to forgive.

            Now a normal person might just have asked the question outright. Then again, it wasn't normal for your assistant to have telepathic powers. So I decided I would rather just experiment some more and observe her reactions. Which was _way_ more fun anyway.

            My conclusion was, she didn't mind, but she liked to mess with me about it. For example: one time she walked in on me in the shower at a very inopportune time. Now you might say this was just a natural consequence of having an open-door policy in the bathroom, BUT all the other times I really didn't want to be interrupted, when I was thinking about _other_ people, or Pepper in ignorance of our psychic connection, she left me alone. The one time _she_ had a starring role post-telepathy realization, in she pops—and not to help out, either, but to give me some mundane message about my schedule that could easily have waited until later. This was absolutely what I called proof in my way of thinking.

            Okay, another time I was in a meeting and I was thinking about her in a _certain way_ , because I was bored, and the particular scenario happened to involve chocolate. I know, this was verging on TMI here, but I was trying to get my point across about this amazing power we had. So Pepper and chocolate were combined in my mind for a sustained period of time. And then, when I walked out of the meeting, there was Pepper— _with a smudge of chocolate on her nose_. I nearly tripped over my own feet. Now, true, Pepper loved chocolate and tended to scarf it whenever she could. But she would never walk around the office with it on her _face_. She was very neat and tidy. In fact, as soon as it had caused my somewhat embarrassing moment of clumsiness, she wiped it off. Definitive.

            Okay, one more. So I was sitting in a meeting, again, and I was bored, again, and my mind was wandering, again. Not to any one person in particular, just kind of jumping around, but all variations on the same theme. Then, all of a sudden, I realized the meeting was about to end, and I was—er, uncomfortable. Let's just say it might be obvious to keen observers that my mind had been elsewhere, and other parts wished they could join it. So I started thinking about math equations, plaid socks, anything unappealing enough to lower the pressure a bit. Wasn't working, though—I could get _very_ involved sometimes. The meeting wound down, but I hadn't, and I was thinking that this was going to be a new and interesting kind of awkward for me, when all of a sudden—my grandma, in her underwear. Like a vision appearing before me—the image popped unbidden into my mind and hit me like a bucket of cold water. Did the trick, alright. In fact I had to work to keep myself from yelping in horror. Definitely _not_ something I would ever have come up with on my own—that was Pepper helping me out a little, I was sure of it. And then of course when I walked out of the room she gave me a concerned look and said, "You seem a bit flushed, sir. Are you feeling alright?" The woman was positively diabolical.

            Well, Rhodey didn't believe any of those examples, either, and in fact insisted that we change the subject entirely, for some reason. He was married; you'd think he would appreciate the opportunity to live vicariously through me. But anyway, _I_ knew what really happened. Psychic connection. Very useful.

            Finally I reached the top of the never-ending cliff. Never doing _that_ again. I hauled myself and my gear over the edge and kind of sat there for a moment, catching my breath and taking in the view. Then I turned around, to look for a shorter way down on the other side, and—

            Yeah, you probably guessed it already. There was Pepper. Sitting there in a folding chair, her laptop on a folding table, working away. Like she wasn't in the middle of an outcropping of rock rising up a thousand feet (more or less).

            "J---s C----t!" I exclaimed, staggering over to her. "What the h—l, Pepper!" Of course I already knew 'what the h—l'—that was Pepper being efficient, in her freakish way.

            I dumped my gear and myself back on the ground at her feet. Climbing mountains was a lot of work. "You were right, sir, it's a very nice view," she agreed, handing me some water.

            "How did you get up here?" I demanded, sloppily dumping the water both in and on me. It was a hot, sunny day, too.

            "I flew." I looked up at her suddenly, because with Pepper you never knew when you might discover a new superpower, but she pointed back through the trees and added, "The helicopter is right over there. Unless you want to climb back down, sir."

            I gave her a look. "No, I do _not_ want to climb back down, Pepper. Climbing back down is absolutely the _last_ thing I want to do. Do you know how incredibly boring mountain climbing is, Pepper?"

            "No, sir. Would you like to tell me?" She was already packing her furniture up into little cubes that fit in her bag.

            "Yes, I _do_ want to tell you. It's _excruciatingly_ boring. Worse than an annual budget meeting, because I have to actually pay attention the whole time so I don't plunge to my death."

            "It's true, there's little opportunity to plunge to your death at the annual budget meeting."

            She started to reach for my backpack and tangle of ropes and harnesses, which weighed approximately five hundred pounds. I snatched it away from her. "What are you—No, I'll carry that!"

            "Are you sure, sir? You seem a bit tired."

            "Pepper, I carried the f-----g thing up the side of a mountain! I can carry it a few hundred feet to the helicopter."

            "Well, if you really want to, sir."

            You see what I mean? You don't, do you? Well, she was subtle. Maybe you had to be there.

* * *


End file.
